


Castling

by freakydeakymoonmagic



Series: Cold, Cold City [1]
Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Borgov is divorced, Cold War Tension, F/M, Getting Together, Liberal use of Italics, Mild Language Barrier, Older Man/Younger Woman, Rivals to Lovers, Romance, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28538148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freakydeakymoonmagic/pseuds/freakydeakymoonmagic
Summary: Beth lingers in Moscow.
Relationships: Vasily Borgov/Beth Harmon
Series: Cold, Cold City [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2107377
Comments: 84
Kudos: 190





	1. Booked

**Author's Note:**

> How did this happen? I finished the series and wrote this in the same afternoon . . . ?

She sticks around Moscow for an extra week. It turns out to be both a great move and kind of a wrench in the funhouse mirrored hallways of her life, shattering glass everywhere.

Beth hopes it doesn’t come off as gloating, lingering in town like this when the plan was to get in, get out, _don’t leave the hotel, got it?_ But the city is aglow with warm lights, rich pastry smells in the crisp cold mornings, and the fresh dustings of snow on the grey cobblestone streets. The delightful bombastic colors of St. Basil’s the only spot of real color in the skyline. It’s a nice change of pace, and a long flight home. Why shouldn’t she enjoy it while she’s already here? Who’s stopping her? Her visa is good for three weeks and she’s on week two. No harm in running out the clock, contrary to her gameplay.

She’d be lying to herself, to say the easy way people love her and show her love here weren’t a factor. Beth is recognized occasionally on the streets and manages to wave and sign proffered receipts or scraps of paper and slip out quickly enough to avoid the fuss of a gathering crowd. Without the help of a bodyguard or getaway car, she needs to be smart about these things. She wanders aimlessly, barely able to read the street signs through sounding out the letters. Those Russian classes have never felt further away now that she has to call on them to earn her right to breakfast. The hotel continues to host her and shelter her from the cold fingers of wind that run through the city. She’s growing rather fond of the room, a longer stay than she’s typically had in a hotel room before, long enough that bottles of travel shampoo and hair styling tools seems to have their own little homes in the bathroom where they belong and will stay.

Without the booze or the pills, she finds bracing winds make her feel even colder and clearer than she’d been during the tournament. The clean edge of her thoughts and decisions is a marvel, but then it’s tiring to make intelligent decisions all the time. It would be easy to get bored, with no company and no games. Tempting, even. It doesn’t happen. On day two after missing her flight back to the states, she goes to a library the travel guide she perused idly on the flight over recommended, allegedly one of the more out-of-the-way historic and architecturally notable spots in the cold, cold city of Moscow. 

When she walks into the foyer, all is quiet marble and white pillars seeming to uphold a decorative ceiling that doesn't seem to need the extra support. Then she spies a front desk from around a pillar and invites herself over. _“Privyet,”_ she says. _“I would like to see the library.”_

 _“Welcome, madam,”_ the man behind the desk says. Is she a return visitor? Would she like a tour? What brings an American to Moscow? As best she can parse, the library keeper has a lot of questions and her Russian isn’t strong enough to really answer.

 _“I am visiting. I would like to see the library, thank you.”_ That stretches the limit of her practiced phrases relevant to the situation and she’s glad to see him relent and show her through the double doors. This isn’t a city that gets many tourists.

He guides her through to a room of some marvel, books hugging the high walls up to a domed skylight. There are charming wooden ladders that reach up to the top shelves perched to the far left of each bookcase. Blue winter light filters through the windows, ledges plump with old snow. It’s cozy in here. And in the corner, on a weathered tabletop - 

A chessboard.

She huffs a laugh to herself, _there really is no escape,_ and the library keeper gives her an odd look, which she is very adept at ignoring. He begins to recount the history of the place with a bearing of great pride in his posture and voice. Beth catches maybe half of it. Old, historied, lots of fancy books, all very evident in the feel of the place. She turns her back to the library keeper to drift a finger against the spines of books she probably can’t read and just enjoys the fact of them without really needing to know what’s in them. Her head tilts up at the sound of the double doors opening. She turns and there is Borgov, with his stiff suit and unsmiling mouth and general air of suffering through great incompetence from the people around him without complaint. One brow lifts and his mouth is just the slightest bit open, an unfamiliar expression on a face that feels familiar from all the time she has spent studying it in magazines and newspaper clippings and across tournament rooms and chess boards. He looks surprised.

“Borgov, hello,” she says, turning fully towards him. She’s surprised, too. _“Good afternoon.”_

His expression has faded back into absence, which is a more comfortable look on him. _“Good afternoon._ You know this place?”

The library keeper looks between them like it’s a tennis match, when really it’s more like racquetball and they’re both playing against the wall. 

“No. I’m just visiting,” she repeats. “I saw it in a travel guide.” Borgov’s left eyebrow tucks in the right the slightest bit and she wonders if that means he doesn’t know the English word for travel guide. _“I read about it.”_ She pulls the small brick of a book out of her white handbag and taps the cover with her index finger. 

“Ah,” Borgov says and then doesn’t seem to know what comes next, which is very unfamiliar to see on the man, indeed. “I come here,” he offers. _“I come here to think sometimes.”_ His English isn’t as strong as she thought it would be, despite knowing intellectually he wouldn’t have a translator if he didn’t need one. It’s possible she explained away the one vulnerability in the man by theorizing he had an interpreter just to present the veneer of a vulnerability. Have more time to weigh his responses to reporters’ questions. 

“It’s a good place for that, I guess. What are you thinking about?” She steps towards him, where he’s still poised in the doorway. 

“Our game.” 

“Naturally. Mister, uh,” she turns back to the library keeper. _“Thank you for the history. May I stay with my friend?”_

The library keeper looks bewildered, either at the English or the fact that they know each other or some third unknown factor Beth is too American to understand. He says yes, of course, he’ll be right outside in case he is needed, and welcome again. 

That leaves Borgov moving out of the doorway, into the room, into a leather armchair in the corner with, why is she fucking surprised, the damn chess board. 

“Do they leave this here for you?” Beth invites herself to sit across from him, crossing one knee over the other under her powder blue dress. Moscow’s a hell of a city to not wear pants in. The impressive width of the chair and the gentleman’s smoking room atmosphere of the library reinforces that idea that she’s a girl trying on a man’s role, a child trying to sit at the big kid’s table. Which she imaged she would feel more keenly in this city than she ever did sitting across from Mr. Shaibel. But Borgov is as expressionless as ever. His lack of interest in the incongruity of her place in the championships as a woman, in Moscow as an American, or as Beth Harmon in his library puts her at ease. Nothing to see here. Situation normal. 

“I suspect so.” Borgov is contemplating the board with arms on the table in his typical pose, or at least she thinks he is. 

“You must come here often.” He glances up, an eyebrow slightly raised. Beth realizes belatedly that he must be aware that sounded a lot like a line. “I meant you must like it here.” 

“I do.” Borgov lifts a hand to move a white pawn to opening gameplay. Beth keeps her arms crossed, leans back her comfortable armchair and doesn’t feel like moving. Borgov eyes her while he moves the black knight. 

She watches him play himself and is too relaxed from her vacation to recognize the game until six moves in. Their Mexico City game. Beth doesn’t move to engage in the game, opting to watch him recall move for move right up to the last point in the game where it would have been possible to turn things around for seventeen year old Beth. 

“I don’t think this is the game you came here to replay.” She doesn’t think it’s too rude to say, not that it’s ever stopped her before. But there’s something about Borgov that demands civility, gentility. She wonders if she makes other people as nervous as he makes her and abruptly decides she hopes she doesn’t, because this is a good kind of nervous and she’d rather be intimidating from a position of fear rather than infatuation. Which is part of why it’s confusing, how much she’s enjoying gallivanting across Moscow in her post-win haze of glory where people seem to love her. 

The soft thump of the felted chess piece bottom tapping against the surface of the board brings her back. “It isn’t,” he says at length. “An interesting game,” Borgov adds and tilts his head, seems to want to add on again with a _nonetheless_ or something similar but doesn’t know the word. 

Beth snorts. “Not particularly. You creamed me. _I did not play well._ Didn’t put up much of a fight, so I can’t imagine it could have been all that interesting for you.” Borgov looks up sharply at that. 

“You seemed to play the best you knew. That is all to be done. One only plays what they know.” 

“Well, from one child prodigy to another, I think we both know there never seems to be a limit until one smacks you in the face. That was a wake-up call for me, so. Thanks. I needed one.” Finding herself scratching the back of her neck, she drops her hand back to her lap and settles in again to watch him play himself, play seventeen year old her. 

Borgov seems to settle back in too, trying a different tack to the ill-fated one she’d chosen years ago. She closes her eyes for a minute and lets the muffled movement of pieces on a board to soothe her. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. It feels right and deserved to just relax in the cozy hold of the library for a moment. 

She wakes with the scrape of chair legs against the marble floor. Borgov is standing and the board looks totally unrecognizable from the game they’d played back in Mexico. White king left standing. Beth really, really hopes she didn’t snore. 

_“I didn’t mean to wake you.”_

“No, that’s alright. I needed to get up,” she says, even though she has no idea what time it is beyond that there’s still weak sunlight coming through the snowy windows and there’s nothing else on her agenda for the week. Beth subtly rubs her mouth with the back of her hand to check for drool. “Where are you going from here? Will you be getting dinner with your family?” 

Borgov shakes his head once. “My family has moved. _To the -------- my wife ----.”_

“Sorry, what?” Beth is missing key pieces of vocabulary here. 

“We are - a split?” She’s never heard The Russian phrase anything as a question before. Maybe nobody has. It’s a day full of firsts around here. 

“Oh,” Beth says and then doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry.” 

"It is . . .” Borgov shakes his head twice and glances briefly at the ceiling. “One only plays the game they know,” he says again. God, he sounds wise. Maybe he’s just as lost as she is, even when she’s chasing the edge of stardom and being the best of the best of the best. Maybe he’s just as lost and simply has the benefit of a million dollar poker face and a sharp suit. 

“Well, do you . . . know where it might be good to have dinner? I’m, uh, new in town.” She huffs a little and invites him in on the joke. He does her one better. 

“I know a place. Come." 


	2. Plated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still happening . . . ?

They sit down at a restaurant dripping with aged wax candles. The walk there is comfortably silent, twenty minutes door-to-door. She doesn’t think she’s imagining two men following them at a distance. Then again, everyone’s bundled up to their ears, so who knows. Everyone looks the same in big coats. Outside, the day is growing smaller and the evening larger, sky taking on a deep blue tilt towards night. She can’t read the menu.

Beth thinks she sees the word “mushroom” and she definitely knows what borscht is and doesn’t care for it. Beyond that, it all might as well be in Greek. Reading is miles apart from speaking.

“What should I get?”

Borgov lifts a finger to call the waiter and orders for them both.

She’d say she feels like they’re still playing chess but neither of them seem to be pursuing a win and while there’s a back and forth, the time spent so far has felt pleasantly aimless. The rhythm of gameplay without power behind the moves. It’s the only game they know.

“So. What’s there to do in Moscow?”

“Like all cities, churches are beautiful,” Borgov springs on her, as impassive as ever.

“Why Borgov, if I didn’t know any better I’d say that was practically poetry. Jesus.” She wishes she had a cigarette. And, as if by magic, Borgov pulls out a pack from his suit pocket. He taps the top of the box to pop one out. Beth doesn’t know what her face is doing, but it can’t be great. She tries to smooth it out, but she can’t help an irrepressible smile as he reaches across the table to offer her a smoke. “Yeah, thanks.”

He flicks his lighter and holds it under her cigarette before pulling out one for himself. So genteel.

“We’re allowed to smoke in here, right?”

“Yes.” He nods to the ashtray on the table. 

“Great.” Beth puffs a cloud of smoke straight up just to watch it curl in on itself and dissipate. It’s calming.

They sit for a moment. It’s weird to be sitting across a table from Borgov without a chess board on it, but they’ll muddle through. He almost holds his cigarette more than smokes it.

“You in town for long?” she asks, taking a drag on the inhale.

“I live here,” Borgov intones.

“I see. Nice place to live.”

Borgov seems to side eye her as thought she’s being facetious, which - 

“No, I mean it’s really a nice place to live. Friendly people.”

“They’re not. _Not normally.”_

“Oh.”

“You are - “ Borgov starts. She imagines he wants to say _particularly well-liked_ but in the end all he says is “- popular.” His p’s pop in a funny little way that’s of course more to do with his accent then trying to put on any particular flourish, but still she can’t help but feel charmed.

“Yeah.” She ducks her head a little. It’s unusual to be in a city so devoted to chess and a little embarrassing she enjoys the positive attention as much as she does. Like when she was only allowed two pills a day and then snuck into the storeroom to steal the whole damn jar. That’s what staying in Moscow is like. “I guess so.”

“No problem,” he says, a non sequitur. “It is good to be liked.”

“It definitely feels good. Maybe too good.”

“Impossible.” Borgov almost has the faint impression of a smile about the corners of his mouth. Beth holds onto her dwindling cigarette a little tighter, tries not to light the carpeting on fire.

Dinner arrives just in time. She puts out her cigarette right as a hot dish of some kind of small dumplings garnished with dill is placed in front of her. Borgov ordered himself some kind of stewed meat. Russians and stew.

 _”Thank you, looks good,”_ she says to the waiter as he fills their water glasses. She’s looking to avoid seeming too thirsty. Flashbacks to Paris continue to fill her with mortification. There’s no way for Borgov to know that, but he’s tucking into his dinner without paying her any mind in a way that puts her at ease. For two people with somewhat limited communication and neither of whom are particularly chatty, they communicate well. They dine quietly. The dumplings are good, better than good. She says so.

“Good.” Borgov glances at her. “I come here often.” 

She snorts a laugh, then laughs out louder. It’s hard to stop. That shadow of a smile is back on his face and it eggs her on. “Wow, so it’s like that. Okay.” Beth tucks her tongue into cheek and nods to herself. “Alright.”

It was never like this with Benny. Or Harry. Or Townes. Borgov is his own man and yet not. In Moscow, it’s less obvious and at first blush it looked more like a show of strength in foriegn lands, but there’s a leash-like quality to the way Borgov’s protection tails him. Beth wonders if he feels more unencumbered here, or less. She feels freer to do her own thing in this city in ways other cities haven’t made her feel, and yet the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. She’ll be lucky not to be painted as commie-sympathizer scum in several corners for hanging out in Russia for a heartbeat longer than absolutely necessary. And if she got in any legal trouble, there’s no fucking telling what getting out of it would look like.

Beth sits back in her seat and rests her hands in her lap. “Dessert?”

“They don’t have it.” Borgov seems to know better than to suggest a nightcap instead. She hums. “Alright,” she says again. “To bed then.” She flits her gaze up. “Alone, obviously.” And then to cover her embarrassment about feeling like she needed to clarify, she briskly chimes, “Let’s not leave those poor men out in the snow any longer.”

Borgov stands and she reaches behind her to pull her coat back on, then realizes she never took it off, chill drafting through a crack between the bottom of the restaurant door and the floor. That explains why it feels so warm in here. Beth covers the move by using the hand on the chairback to brace herself unnecessarily as she stands. Borgov definitely isn’t laughing at her beneath that unreadable face. He’s just putting on his coat. Very slowly and with intention, making a lot of eye contact.

Her shoulders hunch a little as she starts laughing at herself again, their small shared joke sans words. She knows that looking at him probably wouldn’t give her a closer impression of his laughter, but she looks at him anyway.

Beth surprises herself by letting him settle the bill without putting up a protest. Truth be told, it takes some doing to pay in rubles and it’s easy to let him lay what they owe on the table without having to think about it more than watching it happen.

“Walk me back to the hotel.”

“Alright.”

They exit the restaurant into deep night. It’s black out, though not all too much time could have passed. Closer to the north pole and all that, apparently. Beth wishes she thought to buy fur earmuffs and is glad to be slipping on lined gloves. Borgov turns them south and Beth doesn’t argue. Seems like the right direction.

“You still staying there?”

“No, I was only staying for tournament.”

“Makes sense, stay close to the competition. Get in on all the group dinners.”

“You did not seem to enjoy them.”

“It was overwhelming. A lot being spoken, unfamiliar food, unfamiliar faces . . . I guess it’s like that all the time though for you, right?”

Borgov seems to weigh this. “Yes and no.” That seems to be all he’ll say, but then he adds, “When you play around world, many things familiar and unfamiliar.” He’s stretching the limits of what he knows how to say, that much is obvious when so little about him is. Borgov is flexing his one vulnerability like a tender muscle. Entering uncertain territory where the moves haven’t been carefully studied in advance. She wants to reward him for it and doesn’t know how.

“I think I know what you mean. Or I’m beginning to, anyway.” Beth sticks her hands in her pockets and watches the sidewalk pass them by. She doesn’t see the men from before, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

“Harmon.”

“Call me Beth.”

“Beth. How long will you be in Moscow?”

“Til the end of the week.” She wants to know where this line of questioning ends. It is the second question he has ever asked her and that means it’s important. Beth waits for him to say more and he doesn’t. “Why?”

Borgov pauses. “I can show you a church.”

“Like you showed me the library. Okay. I promise I won’t fall asleep on you this time. Hotel lobby at noon? Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Then they’re at the front of the hotel. The two men never reappear after all, and the bellhop looks sleepy. “Thank you for dinner. _I had a nice time.” ___

__“Of course.” Borgov’s mouth seems to twitch and then he’s taking her hand and lifting it and he’s honest to god bending down to kiss the back of her fingers with a light brush._ _

__“Oh my god,” she doesn’t mean to say it but says it anyway. “In a good way. A good ‘oh my god.’ I’m . . . gonna go now.” She starts backing off before she can fit her foot any deeper into her mouth, her hand in his hold the last thing to go. “Um, noon. Tomorrow. See you.”_ _

__Borgov waits until she’s up the stairs and inside, hands in his pockets as it starts to snow. She knows because she walks half-backwards, slipping along the red carpeting until he’s out of view._ _


	3. Steepled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> . . . ?? Someone send help.

There’s a self-recriminating yet very honest part of her that assumes this is just her urge to fuck her opponents taken to dizzying new heights. _Remember, you still have to play this guy. It’s not one and done._ As she’s trying futilely to select a dress and realizes she has to start recycling her chess tournament outfits, she thinks, _What do I want to wear? Not what do I think he wants me to wear, what do I want to wear?_ And then, _no, no, this is_ him _trying to fuck_ me. Probably? She’s not sure how the boys do it in Russia.

__

__

Beth heads down to the lobby in her green velvet number and the white checked cape. She pops on a white cap in front of the mirror. If nothing else, it’ll keep her warm. She hates to be wearing anything in her closet on such heavy rotation. In the elevator, she slips on her gloves to preheat her fingers. Borgov seems like a walking man and she doubts they’re taking a taxi. The guidebook is in her handbag. She arrives in the lobby at five til noon sharp. 

He’s already there, standing at the centerpoint of the room. The concierge and a few guests milling around have an air of intrigue about them and it is not helped once she’s recognized. She strides forward before he can turn around, takes his elbow and says “Let’s roll.”

They prowl towards the door before either of them can be stopped for a signature because she figures that being seen together just doubles the chances of causing a fuss. In the bright winter light, she slips on cateye sunglasses.

The church is not far, it turns out. Borgov is a walking man. It’s still snowing from last night as they step along the dusted road and they match pace in the hustle and bustle of the city center at midday. Beth finds herself unable to pull her hand away from where it’s tucked securely into his elbow, even though it could cause talk if they get made again. He’s keeping it warm. That’s all.

Before, she’s beaten men and then slept with them. Or slept with them with anticipation of then winning, not as a result of the distraction of having slept together but more because she’s just good and always getting better. With The Russian, it’s not so clear. Beth is not sure she could beat him again tomorrow. Oh, she’d give him a run for his rubles and make a big splash, but actually winning? Had taken a legendary teamup of all her old chess pals banding together, weeks of total clear-headedness, and an exhausting warm up with the world’s very best. That’s a tall order. 

The church is beautiful. They wander the pews, still arm and arm as she twists to admire the towering stained glass windows. _”Do you come here often, too, Borgov?”_ She does her best to replicate the phrasing, not sure if it totally translates.

_”In Russian, you should call me Vasya.”_ His mouth still looks stern but his eyes almost seem to dance. Mission success.

“Okay. Vasya.” She turns back to the windows, then changes her mind and turns to him again. “Isn’t that a little informal? _Too friendly?”_

He looks at her and says, _”Not to me, it isn’t.”_

“Alright. C’mon,” Beth tugs on his arm a little. “Let’s sit for a minute.”

They sit together closely in the front row, arms still linked, coats bunched around their waists and watching the altar like they’re waiting for a priest to appear out of thin air to get service started. But the church is empty and it’s only them.

“Can we smoke in here, too?”

Borgov actually huffs through his nose. “No.”

“Man.” She contemplates the mosaic on the vaulted ceiling. “Well, I like it anyway.” Beth leans her head back against the pew and rests a hand on her stomach. “I thought all communists were atheists.”

Borgov should probably be insulted and instead seems to likely say something in Russian about architecture being architecture without quite saying that; she can’t quite decipher even though he speaks clearly and with as much distinction as ever. 

“Right,” she agrees and thinks yeah, she probably would if she knew what he was saying. Maybe he's been doing the same thing with her. “When are you gonna kiss me?” He turns to look at her properly.

_”When you’re ready,”_ he replies, voice low in the dim sit of the church. “I’m ready,” Beth assures him. He unlinks their arms to put an elbow on the pew behind them and cup a hand around her skull. Borgov lets his hand drift down a little, almost petting her copper hair. It’s suddenly very, very warm in this drafty old church. His eyes trace her face. _”You’re ready?”_

“Yeah, I’m read-” Then his mouth is on her, head tilting slot right up against hers so their noses brush, which nearly feels more intimate than the kiss itself. His mouth moves and so does hers. Beth finds herself leaning forward into it. Borgov’s hand has slipped down to cup the back of her neck. She’s probably not getting enough air. Beth pulls away to let herself breathe again.

Borgov pulls away more slowly, pressing a lingering kiss on the corner of her mouth and making entirely too much eye contact.

“Wow, kissing in a church. You really are an atheist,” she says, even though it was her idea.

He shrugs. Beth leans forward again to rub at the lipstick smudged on his mouth. The touch of her thumb to his bottom lip jolts her, enough that she has to lean forward and peck him on the cheek once, twice. Then start rubbing that lipstick off, too.

Borgov takes her hand to place it on his leg, seemingly so it has somewhere to go. He pulls out his pocket square and dabs at his mouth. Then he raises an eyebrow as if to say, “Did I get it all?” He didn’t, and she has to resist going in for another smooch, it’s so uncharacteristically cute. He seems to know what she’s thinking because he leans back a little. She snatches the pocket square from him and swipe off the rest, wetting it with her tongue a bit to rub the last bit off the flat plane of his cheek. Beth folds the pocket square so none of the red blush of lipstick or damp sign of saliva is showing and tucks it tidily back into his breast pocket. Borgov eyes her like a ticking time bomb, like he has no idea what move to expect next.

She desperately wants to go shopping but has no money and is too proud to ask a - a gentleman caller to cover expenses. Even as she’s thinking it, she’s realizing she actually is pretty impulsive and he’s right to be wary, in a way. What to do other than shopping? There’s one other thing she loves more, other than drugs and drink, and suddenly she finds she wants to share it with him, not use it against him. “Wanna play chess?”

That has him turning his head. “Could be fun,” she sweetens the deal. There’s that phantom of a smile about his mouth again, even as he’s lifting her hand to his lips again and asking, _”Are you sure?”_ And he’s right to. Could get confusing to be doing whatever it is they’re doing and play each other on top of it. Chess is a dangerous game.

“Speed chess, then. You play much?”

_”I used to, when I was younger. It’s been a while.”_

“No time like the present.” There’s a vanishingly small chance he knows the expression, but he seems amenable to the tone of what she’s saying and that’s enough. It all is.

They go to the park.


	4. Vaunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need to be stopped.

The park is fucking cold. But still lovely. And maybe a third of the chess tables are filled, all old men. She keeps her glasses and hat on and hopes not to be noticed, but it feels so right to be here. Maybe a young Vasya played here as a boy or perhaps he comes here in midwinter all bundled up and incognito to play old men in peace. He seems to sit comfortably in the frozen seat and it speaks to some degree of familiarity.

The chess board is between them again and that feels right, too. She looks up at him and says, _”Let’s play.”_

He makes his opening play and her hand is on a pawn before his hand even leaves the chess piece. Borgov exhales through his nose, seemingly in place of a laugh, and makes his next move lightning fast. Hasn’t played since his youth, her ass. She’s been had. They make moves at light speed and the sound of pieces moving so quickly attracts a bit of attention, not enough to make her nervous but enough to be slightly distracting when she can’t afford distraction if she’s going to beat this bastard. She makes her moves even faster.

Pieces are practically flying off the board. The game is over in minutes and they aren’t even using a clock. Vasya takes the win without expression but the board is reset without pause between one game and the next, colors flipped without communication needed and then they’re off to the races again. Her hand hovers above the board ready for the next move and the next, Borgov’s elbow perched on the edge of the table with his hand at the constant beck and call of pieces that demand their place in battle. She notices shadow from the periphery but it barely registers as she gives her whole attention to the board. Beth takes the second game and they set up for game three, switching colors again and setting off on another merry chase of cat-and-mouse. It’s never clear who’ll be the mouse until it’s too late. She plays cat again and beats him in what has to be in four minutes but feels like time stretched long, hand cramping from faster play than she’s ever had before. The fastest she will ever have. The best she will ever have. There is no other competition. There are challengers, but only one honest meeting of her mind to another’s. This is to be savored like the fine wine she’s staunchly avoiding, for now. To be experienced with reckless abandon and held close to cherish in the time after. And god, she’s trying.

They’re in the middle of game four when she finds herself giggling and propping her chin up on her hand. She takes her eyes off the board for the first time since they started to discover that for once, he doesn’t have that look on his face like he’s unbelievably bored but paying attention anyway. He is alight. Beth giggles again, feeling giddy from good game and high spirits - without actually imbibing spirits. Weird. She normally has to be high as a kite to feel the kinds of feelings she’s feeling. Beth has felt for a long time that she takes the things she takes to supplement the missing parts of her, the emotional parts, the parts that like people and enjoy human conversations. She feels them waking up now, stretching their legs.

She takes her moment to take in the scenery, which is mostly old men in dark coats circling round their small table with rapt expressions of delight. _”Hello,”_ she says to the gathered crowd. The gathered players cheer and greet her, then she turns her attention back to the game. She takes off her sunglasses. They aren’t doing any good anyway.

They play six more games in quick succession before her toes become too numb to ignore. Vasya is readying the board again when she lays a hand on his to press pause. “My feet are cold. Can we go inside?” She’s never had to be the one to say enough when it comes to rematches. And honest to god, she can’t remember who won how many games - which would be a lie, if she put her mind to the recollection - but by god, right now it just doesn’t seem to _matter._ For fucking once, it doesn’t determine the worth of the game or her as a person or anything at all. It’s superfluous to the game that was played itself. Looking into Borgov’s eyes, she sees kindred sentiment there, and even if it’s not the same thing and it’s all in her head or it’s real and it doesn’t change the fact that this is all a very bad idea, she just doesn’t _care._ The game is no one’s and the game is theirs. Beth is suddenly grateful she’d taken off her shades just so they could share this look, this moment of mutual understanding, and hopes she isn’t pasting all her emotions onto a blank canvas a man who is simply following her whims. Because the closer she gets to feeling things, the more she gets the feeling that this is a terrible idea. She thinks about what Benny would say, and laughs again. “Sorry,” she ends the laugh with a cough, pulling her hand back to cover it. “That was fun.”

Vasya inclines his head and it’s all well and good to be so composed, but she can still spy that flickering lit fire giving away his excitement. She really fucking hopes she’s not just imagining the things she’s reading on him. Beth wonders if his protection detail notices these things, if his ex-wife imagined the same crap until she got tired of doing all the work of having emotions for two, if his son will grow to be just as impassive - giving nothing nothing nothing until the absence twists itself into a black hole that eats itself whole.

They stand and straighten frosty outer clothes. The old men clamor for autographs and Beth indulges a few until she decides to do all of them. It’s a smaller crowd than she typically draws these days, anyhow. Why not? Borgov doesn’t give any and they don’t ask. _”Thank you, good night,”_ she waves goodbye to the gathered hardscrabble men and gives them a little smile. They remind her and also very much do not remind her of Shaibel. Any old man with a chessboard and yet no one else she’s ever met.

It’s good not be alone with these thoughts. Of all people, Vasily “call me Vasya” Borgov to be the one to lead her along to a toasty little bakery with quiet thoughts of Mr. Shaibel wandering the worn pathways in her mind would not have been her top guess. They walk in the gathering gloom. It’s not even three and it’s already growing somewhat darker; the overcast clouds look fit to flurry.

She has a new old man teach her new heights in chess, the summit even.

Vasya hands her a pastry and she eats without comment. Again, it’s a winner and she feels he wouldn’t have brought her here if he didn’t already know that. She admires his cashmere scarf from up close in the tight quarters of the bakery. They make too much eye contact again. Beth has trouble keeping her eyes tucked away as she chews. He buys her a coffee but not one for himself. They don’t speak.

She turns around to sneeze, then accepts the coffee. They stand in the corner of the bakery as she sips and watches the other people pass them by in the small shop and through the frosted window panes. 

There’s a clutch of people, maybe a family, entering the bakery and the sudden press of bodies has her hustling him back against the corner and scooting up even closer. “Sorry.”

He takes her free hand and folds it to his chest, holds it there. Struck by the gesture, the willingness to be even closer, from such a closed-off man, she shuffles forward. There’s a warmth in his gaze, something there, there just has to be. She’s not that imaginative, not in the sense of fiction. It’s real. And it’s frightening.


	5. Engraved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe we should start a support group?

A chess academy invites her to tour the campus on day four after skipping her planned flight home. She finds the letter on a silver plated dish on the hotel dresser after their long walk home from the bakery. With no other plans on the itinerary, she goes. Borgov will call on her if he has time or interest in spending more time together.

It’s really just a grand building with a courtyard, but in a city as cold as this one, perhaps keeping it all bundled into one building and calling it a campus was a strategic move. The headmaster is very welcoming and very nervous. She tours around the class rooms and grand halls. Beth doesn’t know what she would have made of a place like this if she had come here instead of Methuen. The students are mostly boys of course, and the handful of girls look at her with stars in their eyes. Everyone’s in tidy maroon uniforms. Beth decides she probably wouldn’t have done well, found a different metaphorical jar of sedatives and just fucking gone for it.

She signs things, shakes cold hands, and stumbles through in a mixture of English and Russian to the best of her ability. She exits the academy and hails a taxi. The ride back to the hotel provides an interesting perspective on the city. The seat next to her feels empty and it’s not her all-American bodyguard she’s missing. Beth would think to phone Vasya if she had the good sense to ask for his number and he had the desire to offer it.

Upon arrival, she abruptly decides to go to the hotel bar, then when she gets to the entryway, about-faces and marches straight to the elevator. Her black and white diamond dress sways with the sudden movement and her heels feel loud on the floor. _Clack, clack clack._ Are people watching her or is she just feeling overly conscious of the choice not to indulge? So many eyes on her all the time now, fuck it’s exhausting.

It feels all of sudden like an impulsive decision has begun to swell into something much larger. She’s unhappy Borgov hasn’t called and decided not to drink out of anger in spite of it. That’s big and she isn’t sure what it means. If it’s bad she cares enough that it was tempting or it’s good she has enough willpower to resist. Life’s complicated and Russia is a cold place with warm people. If a reporter asks her what she thought of her stay, that’s what she’ll say, she decides.

In the suite, she throws down her white coat and slips off her heels, throws herself on top of the duvet spread-eagle, lays there for a while. She’s starting to miss Kentucky. Beth lays there for a minute. Coughs a little to clear her throat of all the cold air.

The phone rings. 

Beth flings a hand out and flaps around until it lands on the plastic handle. Fumbling, she picks up. “Yes?”

“A Mr. Borgov for you, madame. Shall I put him through?”

“What? Oh, yes! Yeah, please, thanks.” She needs to calm down. God, her pulse is thundering for no fucking particular reason. She needs a drink and she needs one now.

The line clicks through. “Vasya?”

“Beth.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I wondered if you would like to walk across _\------_ bridge this evening.” There’s something practiced in the words, premeditation. He looked up the phrasing before calling.

She flips over in bed and wags her feet in the air, peddles them back and forth like she’s swimming. Beth curls her finger around the coil of the phone line, then uncurls. Tucks the phone in the cradle between her neck and clavicle. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” She almost wants to let it sit and force him to say more, to ask for something, anything. She wants to _push._ She doesn’t, because she can admit she likes him.

“Sure. Pick me up?”

“It is a long walk. Meet at the _big stone bridge.”_ She catches it the second time. Big stone bridge? Oh, the Bolshoy Kamenny. _Big Stone Bridge._ Right. It was in the guidebook.

“Yeah, alright. What time?”

“Eight.”

“Okay, see you there.”

“Goodbye.” The line goes dead. What he lacks in phone etiquette, he makes up for in quiet charm.

Beth reads up on the bridge in the trusty guidebook in advance. She doesn’t imagine Vasya will play tour guide much, so it’ll be better to go in with some background. Then she hits the books on chess theory, which she has horrifically started to actually enjoy doing for fun. She dines alone in the downstairs restaurant, ordering tea to soothe her throat from all the cold, and has to pause her meal multiple times to entertain excited fans, some of them far more glamorous looking than herself. It’s flattering.

When the taxi pulls up at the bridge, she steps out and immediately regrets not wearing more sensible shoes. It’s goddamn nippy out and these heels aren’t going to cut it, leather or no. Beth doesn’t see Vasya anywhere and her watch is still broken, so she heads to the railing and leans over to consider the water for a while. Chill steam wafts off the rippling dark surface and she kills some time thinking about what it would be like to jump in, more out of sensory curiosity than any macabre urge. Cold, probably.

At length, a subtle warmth appears to the left of her arm and she doesn’t look up when she says, “Hey.”

“Good evening, Beth.”

“Nice bridge.”

“Thank you.”

She’s feeling weirdly melancholy and can’t put her finger on it. Beth tries not to come across as sulky. She doesn’t know how to ask how his day was or what he got up to or what the fuck they’re doing here without coming off as needy or houswifey or awkward. She doesn’t know how to do anything. Beth smooths both hands down her hair tightly and tries to breathe deeper. It takes a fucked up person to get upset over nothing.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah I’m - I’m fine.” Her breath is coming out a little faster, throat feeling rough, and she doesn’t know why she feels shaky. “I think I . . . just don’t have positive associations with bridges.” There’s no fucking way he knows what positive association means. _”Maybe I don’t like bridges,”_ she tries, glancing up at him to gauge comprehension. Ah, there’s that look of recognition. She doesn’t want to know why he knows that. But then, they did seem to know an awful lot about her on the elevator ride so long ago.

He doesn’t try to pull her away from the water or the railing or anything. Vasya lets her be and together they take in the rippling surface of the waters below. 

“She . . . tried to kill us both. In the car.” Beth can’t look at him, couldn’t look at herself if the water were more reflective. Why is she telling him this? “I’ve never told anyone that.” She holds a hand out without looking. “Cigarette.”

A cigarette appears between her fingers, lighter held under it until it catches. Beth takes a deep drag and exhales slowly, trying not to cough with the influx of hot air against the cold all around.

It’s quiet for a while after that.

The many dotted lights of the Kremlin glow and glance off the shifting water.

She doesn’t know what his damage is and in some ways she doesn’t want to know. All that’s in evidence is his blissful silence and the lack of pity she craves so desperately and didn’t know it until she started having it. It’s going to be difficult to let go. Beth coughs delicately around her cigarette.

But then, why should she let go of it, when she’s always said fuck you to the consequences before? If she can fuck Benny Watts and get over herself and still feel ready to Kentucky fry his ass on the chessboard, why not The Russian? What’s the difference?

She knows it even as she’s asking herself. There’s a big difference. And she may not see the full shape of it yet, but there is a big motherfucking difference. Seismic.

Beth drops the burnt end of the cigarette and grinds it into the bridge with the ball of her finely-heeled foot.

“What next?” 

He walks them across the bridge, not a particularly long walk and extra chill wafting off the waters, but enjoyable in that being with Vasya is both like solitude and having very intense company at the same time.

Intellectually, it does not seem smart to be walking towards the Kremlin as a visiting American in Soviet Russia. But Vasya does not seem concerned, so she won’t be either. She wonders what the protection detail makes of this particular outing. It’s probably not helped when he says, _“My apartment is nearby,”_ and she says, “Yes.”


	6. Ushered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Train's left the station, people.

There’s a yet-undiscovered weirdest part of their acquaintance, Beth thinks to herself as they waltz from the bridge through a beautifully aged part of the city to a row of stately townhouses that look like writers and poets and scholars live there in classy communes, trading wisdoms over home-cooked meals and tasteful orgies. What the weirdest part will be is undetermined, she decides, but right now the major contenders are the fact that they haven’t had sex and the fact that they haven’t drank.

Maybe he thinks she can’t have a drink without going full-on Paris. Which. He may not be far off the mark. Maybe Vasya doesn’t drink. Maybe he likes her sober. Another weird thought.

Maybe she likes being sober around him, so she doesn’t miss anything important. He’s a subtle man, there’s a lot that would be easy to miss, drunk. Afterall, she could have suggested vodka at any point in the day and it probably would have been culturally appropriate. And she hasn’t and she doesn’t like what that implies.

Vasya opens the door to the first floor of a white stone townhouse. He flicks on the lights and it’s all very tastefully appointed, of course it is. Ornamental carpet on the floor, antique wooden furniture, clean white walls, crenellated crown moulding. It looks like the decor hasn’t cared to change in a few decades and honestly hasn’t needed to. No chessboard anywhere. Don’t take your work home with you, they say, but she hadn’t taken Borgov for the kind of man who would actually follow that advice.

He takes her coat and she hangs her hat and handbag over it on the coat rack. He hangs his own coat and ah yes, there is the ever present three-piece suit.

“Sit,” he offers, and while it would be rude on any other person she’s met, on him it simply seems like he’s simply observing the next logical course of action. She sits on a loveseat, one leg tucked under the other at a slant. 

Vasya heads to the kitchen and she hears the light clatter of a kettle being settled in a sink to be filled, boiled, and brewed. Beth tries not to smile to herself and ends up sneezing instead.

She casts about for a box of tissues but doesn’t see any. _”Vasya, do you have any tissues?”_ It feels a bit silly, finally whipping out one of those phrases the language instructor had them rehearse over and over again in class. _Do you have any tissues? May I have a coffee? Where is the bathroom?_

When Vasya doesn’t answer, she asks _”Where is the bathroom?”_

_”To the right.”_ There’s a clinking sound from the kitchen.

Beth heads left out of the sitting room, down a short hallway to spy the bathroom on the right. It seems like Soviets are fond of small bathrooms. She finds tissues under the sink and once she starts blowing her nose, there seems to be no end to it. Beth was way more congested than she thought. Once she’s cleared out her nose, it seems to aggravate her throat and she coughs for a minute. She grabs a handful more tissues to stuff into the pocket of her woolen white dress, pleats peeking out with the shift in silhouette.

Vasya’s setting out tea in the sitting room. Chamomile, from the smell and happy yellow color of it when she lifts the teacup close to her face. She hums in appreciation as she sips. “Thank you.”

He sits in his armchair with poise she feels she would never want to measure up against, even as a so-called self-made woman of glamor. But his shoulders look sort of relaxed, maybe, when she takes a moment to observe it. Vasya crosses an ankle over a knee and it makes him look more at ease, more like a person and less like a block of ice.

Beth eases back into the loveseat and coughs a little into her fist the movement, then sniffs. “All that cold must be catching up with me.” He makes no sign he understood what she said, just tilts his head a little in deference to whatever her reasoning might be. She doesn’t know how to put it in Russian, so she lets it go, then coughs again and has trouble stopping.

The tea helps coat her throat, but also presents her body with something else to hack on. “Whew, sorry. Not sure what’s gotten into me.” She feels vaguely embarrassed about coming over to a man’s apartment, maybe - probably? - to sleep with him and then hacking it up all over the place, but mostly she feels that Vasya wasn’t expecting or not expecting anything. Any direction things head in would be met with equanimity. There’s a sureness to him that is both frustrating and reassuring - there can be no wrong moves when there is no reaction.

Vasya meets her gaze evenly and takes another drink of his tea.

She feels it roll through her, far from the first time. That bewildering mixture of wanting to both be him and beat him. Fuck him. Be fucked. God. She sneezes again.

Then Vasya is saying come, and guiding her over to a chaise lounge. Beth hopes and believes he is going in for a kiss, but props her up against the partially reclined back of the chaise instead, seating himself on the edge. He pulls the wadded tissues from her pocket and places them in her hand. She snuffles and avoids another cough by keeping her mouth closed, but he probably catches the movement of her chest anyway. By her count, that’ll be the first time he’s glanced at her chest and it must be some kind of world record. She chuckles at the thought.

“This is not how I thought the night would go.”

“No,” he says, then offers more tea. Beth takes it, gulps it down like a shot and asks for another. Vasya gets up to boil another kettle of water. There’s actually a TV in against the wall and she levers herself up to crouch in front of it, find the power button. She wants to watch Soviet cartoons, if they exist. Beth is flipping between increasingly bewildering channels when - aha! - she finds a black and white cartoon. Eerie movements on the screen delight her, the animation so mesmerizingly strange.

Beth hops back onto the chaise lounge before Vasya can come back to coax her into it. She doesn’t need to be coaxed, thank you. She knows she needs to lie down. She tries to pose appealingly. If she can’t make either of them feel good, she can at least do the work of looking good not doing it.

He brings back another pot, sets it on the low coffee table, puts himself back on the edge of the chaise and pours them both another cup. He seems bemused at her choice of entertainment, but not judgemental. Beth feels very young all of a sudden, even the absence of judgment. Vasya turns to her and puts a hand on her knee. _”I enjoyed this as a boy,”_ and boy is it hard to picture a young, serious-faced Vasya sitting in a movie theatre watching anything for fun. Doing anything for fun. 

_”I bet,”_ she murmurs, blowing on the surface of the hot tea. _”Your Russian is getting better,”_ he observes, smoothing a hand down her leg idly.

_”I suppose,”_ she says, feeling coy. Beth turns her head away to pat at her nose with the tissues. If she’s being honest with herself, she’s been cramming in as many Russian phrases as possible at night with her little brick of a phrasebook and been trying not to think too closely about why.

She prays to a god she’s not sure she believes in that being intimate, at least in one sense, with Vasya doesn’t diminish the accomplishment of beating him at the tournament. It’s less about what other people think and more about feeling like he’s a mountain she’s climbed and doesn’t want to cheapen the achievement by hangliding back down. But then yes, it’s also about what other people think. And in that sense, she really doesn’t want anyone to know. But on the other hand, she is immensely proud she has won any amount of affection from a man she has admired professionally for so fucking long and wants _everyone_ to know. _He likes me! He likes me, he likes me!_ It’s not like she hasn’t already outed herself as knowing Russian. It’s not damning in and of itself - at the time, it had felt more like a declaration of wanting to beat the greatest players in the world, not fraternize. A way to say _I’m coming for you_ without displaying aggression.

It’s probably time to head back to the hotel, late and getting later, but she doesn’t want to. And Beth Harmon does what she wants. _”I learned it for you,”_ she finds herself saying instead, and works very hard not to glance up at him through her eyelashes because she feels that would be manipulative and goddammit they’re not playing chess.

Vasya tilts her chin up with a finger consideringly. _”I thought it would help me beat you,”_ she admits. Then she has to ask, _”Did it work?”_

He rumbles something in response she can’t parse but imagines goes something like “it didn’t hurt” just to justify the hours she spent in that dinky classroom and she thinks maybe her Russian isn’t as strong as they both think.

“I want to kiss you, but I don’t want to get you sick.” Vasya actually does smile at that, the close-mouthed smile she’d seen at the end of the tournament when they both realized the game was over and he flickered from smiling to unsmiling back and forth like he’d never done it before. He presses lips to the back of her hand, pats it, and swoops in to press his lips to her cheek. Almost as if to give her a closer approximation of what she really wants, what they both want.

Beth staunchly refuses to blush when she’s practically in repose on what amounts to a fainting couch. But she does permit him a small smile and the eye contact he seems to feed off of, tucks her chin into her neck and tries not to feel flustered.

On screen, there’s a little claymation crocodile waddling around looking lonely. Without sound, there isn’t much context. She wishes she were paying more attention, it looks intriguing.

_”Stay for tonight. You’re not well,”_ Vasya’s saying. “I couldn’t impose,” she tries to say through another cough into her fist. “Well. Alright.” She caves quickly. Beth doesn’t like the idea of heading back out into the night, the taxing business of lumbering back into her coat, waiting on a taxi, and climbing through the long series of steps it would take to get back into bed.

Vasya helps her up with hands on her arms like she’s fragile and she shakes him off to walk down the hall under her own power. She passes three doors and he leads into what looks to be the guest room. She imagines the door at the end of the hall to be the master bedroom, one side of the bed now left empty. And the room between the bathroom and the guest room, in her mind’s eye she imagines a little boy’s room with toys gathering dust. 

He tugs on the lamp cord, peels back the duvet to let a triangle slice lay back invitingly, showing the creamy white sheets beneath. Suddenly that bed looks like heaven. Beth slides off her heels and brushes past him to slip into bed still clothed before anyone can change their mind. She smiles at him. “Thanks, Vasya.” He leaves the room and comes back with the box of tissues.

“Good night, Beth.” He doesn’t turn off the lamp, but he does close the door behind him. She’s out like a light.


	7. Enveloped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Choo, choo.

Beth wakes to bright sunlight feeling like shit. She coughs her way awake, thickness in her lungs. She reaches out blindly, grabbing for the box of tissues and blows her nose as hard as she can, tries to repress another cough because her throat feels raw and she doesn’t want to. She looks at the clock on the wall. Fuck, it’s past eleven. She slept like a brick.

The coughing summons Vasya into the room, looking as imperious as he ever does in another suit, though wonder of all wonders, he does have a few buttons undone. _”Beth, it’s good you’re awake.”_ Wow, expressing an opinion. The day’s already off to an unusual start, so who knows else what it’ll bring. “Yeah? What’s up?”

_”You slept twelve hours,”_ he says, betraying no particular opinions this time, but the words themselves tell a different story. “Were you worried about me?” She tilts her head coquettishly and rests her chin on folded arms atop the pillow, feels her mouth curve into something sweet. 

Vasya exhales through his nose and says something or other about medicine. “Okay.” Beth is feeling agreeable. “How did you sleep, Vasya?” She imagines he got up at six sharp and started doing something suitably militaristic, like push ups or intense self-grooming or splashing himself with ice water. Something where he turns that sharp gaze towards himself to perform maintenance like the little machine man he is. And isn’t. The tin man oiling his joints.

She both does and doesn’t mean it as a come on, feels empowered by their inability to act on flirtations. Loves the freedom of saying whatever the hell she wants without the expectation of doing anything about it. She doesn’t mean to be hard on him, but god he’s fun to poke.

He leaves for a while, presumably running out to the pharmacy or whatever it is one has to do in Soviet Russia for medicine. 

Beth rests her eyes. There’s a book left on the nightstand. It’s not in English and looks laborious just glancing at the title - _something something History of something_ \- but she picks it up anyway. It’s a military history, she parses at length. Chapter one.

She’s two pages in by the time Vasya returns, which is to say he took his sweet time. _”The history of the cannon is long and storied, with much bloodshed and the widowing of mothers and wives,”_ she deadpans. At least she thinks that’s what she says, not one hundred percent on the translation. Could be about carrier pigeons, there’s really no telling.

Holding up a glass bottle of cough syrup, Vasya says, _“No bloodshed today.”_ He seats himself at the bedside and pours a healthy dose into a spoon. Vasya hands her the spoon. Beth takes the bitter medicine, wants to ask for another to see what delights excess might bring, and another, but doesn’t want to embarrass herself in front of this man. And is strangely and disturbingly disappointed he didn’t try to feed it to her himself. She avoids his eyes for a moment. “Thank you.”

The medicine is set aside and Vasya stands again to walk out of the room without further comment. Beth turns back to her unbelievably dull book.

Vasya reappears with more tea, something herbal. He lays out the full tray on the bedspread, sits on the other side of the bed shoes and all to have his own cup. She eyes his oxfords then glances at him with an eyebrow quirked. He sighs and begins to unlace them. Telling him what to do is its own high.

Beth has a coughing fit halfway through her cup of tea and the only thing for it is to continue coating her throat with more hot liquid. Vasya rests a hand on her back as she hunches forward. “Wow, this is so not what you signed up for,” she says to herself.

He takes her teacup and refills, tells her, “More.” Vasya matches her cup for cup as if to coach her into hydration. The stupid part is that it works. She wonders if this is what he would do with his wife or his son. Mother or father. She wants to know.

All the hydration has her crawling out of bed and down the hall to the bathroom. She catches sight of her unsightly bedhead and rumpled wool dress and has to sigh. “Jesus Christ.” Beth starts to comb through her hair and pat it down then abruptly throws in the towel. Whatever, he’s already seen it. She blows her nose with the paper-thin toilet paper, rubs her nose raw and flushes the whole mess.

She stumbles to the bedroom and tucks herself back into bed, keeping her knees together. Vasya’s still nursing a cup of tea and has stolen her book.

_”War should be known as ------------- not without its uses. Violence has as much a place in the life of man as love. We should know when ------- and to indulge the other,”_ he reads.

“Well, that’s certainly one philosophy.” She scoots a little closer, rolls to face him fully. “Pawn to D4.”

Vasya eyes her carefully like he’s trying to inspect her ability to play with a clear head and then judges conditions to be fair. Or that the opportunity is just too damn good to pass up. “Pawn to H6.”

They play that way for a while, until Beth begins to lose the thread of what piece went where. She rolls onto her back to visualize the board on the ceiling. It’s coming easier and easier now. Vasya glances up with her again, but doesn’t ask what she sees. She moves her right hand rapidly to arrange the pieces to the current state of play, rests the other on her stomach. Knocks peices off the board and shifts the correct ones forward. She coughs up some phlegm, then says, “Knight to F7.”

Beth feels his eyes on her face and she turns to look at him. His expression conveys the faint impression of wonder, lifted brows. It’s funny; she’s spent all this time thinking about how he’s the greatest player she may ever play and here’s this new thought, that maybe she’s the same thing for him. Coming out of left field, but new challenger number one nonetheless. It’s a blissfully good thought. Maybe she’s intimidating him right now. Making him nervous. That puts a grin right on her face. “Your move.”

Vasya seems to have no trouble keeping track of the pieces, but also doesn’t have the same predictive power visualization gives her. She seizes a victory cut short by a racking cough that has her curling on her side in misery. Vasya lays a hand on her ribs as they move with a deep sigh, and it’s warm even through the thick wool of the dress. _”What do you need?”_

_”Don’t know,”_ she murmurs through a stuffy nose.

_”You should eat.”_

_“Okay.”_

He leaves and comes back with what seems like little time in between. Vasya has a bowl of something tasty, and ah, of course. Russians and stew.

She eats most of it to appease him. _”Happy?”_

Vasya frowns deeper than his natural resting expression. _”No.”_

“Ah, still worried, I see. That’s sweet.” Beth puts the bowl on the tea tray. “I leave the day after tomorrow.”

Beth meets his gaze. “What do we do?”

_”What do you mean?”_

“How do we stay in touch? I don’t want to leave, but my visa’s up.”

_”The normal ways, Beth,”_ he says calmly, just like he does fucking everything else.

“What, letters, phone calls? Fuck. That’s not enough.”

_”Enough for what?”_

“Enough for - well.” She doesn’t know how to finish that thought. Not out loud. He takes her hand and pulls it to his lap, easing it between both of his own.

_“It can be enough. For now.”_ Vasya presses his mouth to her palm, drops it back into his lap. _”The next tournament isn’t far away. You’re going to Hastings? Amsterdam?”_

“I don’t know, chess on Christmas . . .” she trails off with a smile. “If you’re there, I am, too.”

He gives her a faint impression of a smile. _”Good.”_ It goes without saying they won’t go easy on each other. It’s so vitally important, it can’t even stand to be said. It would be a crime against everything they are, everything they could be to each other do give anything less than the very best.

No, for the relationship to survive, they will need to be even better competitors than before. Together, they can play the best chess of their lives. With luck, and this is her getting far and away ahead of herself, they could have it every day.

It has to be enough. They have to make it be.


	8. Collected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full steam ahead, kids.

Eventually, circumstances force her to return to the hotel. To pack, to quiet the gossip, to use up the last of her shampoo, and to settle the bill. Things to be done. It’s going to be tiring enough getting there and settling all her affairs that she’ll need the final day to rest up for the flight home.

Vasya seems grumpy as he sees her to the door to collect her coat. He helps her into it, smooths down the back and offers her the hat. She fusses with her hair before pulling it on snug to cover the rumpled waves. Beth is careful to button up to conceal the telling wrinkles in her dress. He called a taxi fifteen minutes ago and it’s due any minute. “What’s your telephone number?” she finally thinks to ask. She swings her handbag onto her shoulder as Vasya fetches a pencil and a square of heavy cardstock. He writes down his phone number, then his street address. _”To write,”_ he clarifies and twitches the corner of his mouth like he tried to smile for her and didn’t quite get there. She wants to put her mouth there, feel the movement there with the sensitive places on her body, wants to live there. “Visit me instead. Room 709.” When he pauses, she laughs at him and says, “To talk. I promise I won’t infect you.”

There’s a honk outside. “Time to go.” She wants to at least go in for a peck on the cheek, but really doesn’t want to get him sick. Sabotaging the competition. It feels different if he’s the one choosing to risk it by kissing her than the other way around. Instead, she presses a gloved hand to his cheek and grins at him. Her face is sore from the cold, sore from smiling. “Bye, Vasya.” Beth steps out the door into the last of the sunlight and traipses down the townhouse steps to the curb, climbs into the waiting taxi. She sees Vasya standing at the window and finds herself pressing her hand to the glass as the car pulls away. They’ll see each other soon. It’ll be okay.

Beth arrives at the hotel a little flustered and tries to walk in with as much composure as possible. She takes a page out of Vasya’s book and tries to look as unaffected as possible. The concierge and staff seem knowing, which is concerning, and they aren’t the only ones paying attention. Beth even thinks she spies a reporter, or else a tourist with a high enthusiasm for photography. She clears her throat gently and makes her way to the elevator.

She strides into her hotel room and collapses immediately into bed.

Beth groans, then sits up again. “Okay,” she says, deciding to do the basics of packing while she’s still got momentum. She knows she can’t expect much from herself tomorrow. She even puts herself into the shower, moaning into the hot spray. The shampoo has one more use in it and she wants it finished right on time, have the sheer satisfaction of it. Her airport outfit is left hanging in the closet and the rest of her clothes are folded and stashed into the suitcase. Books piled on the end table within easy reach of the bed so she doesn’t die of boredom tomorrow. Beth slips into a silk nightgown and calls it a day.

Just to set herself up for success, she leaves a glass of water on the end table. As she’s doing it, she realizes the cough syrup is still at Vasya’s and thinks maybe she's just humoring herself to think that might have been a subconscious decision on Vasya's part because her forgetfulness was one hundred percent genuine. That this kind of person might have a part of his head he may not see or understand, have false walls in the library of the mind. She’s glad to have a reason to see him again; he’s a man who needs a purpose and if it’s playing fetch, she’s game.

Beth sleeps long hours deep into the next morning. The telephone is ringing its shrill little cry again, the tiny bell inside worrying at her and dragging her from her doze. Her head feels like it weighs about a million pounds. Beth picks up. 

“Hello?” she croaks.

“A Mr. Borgov for you, madam.”

“Yeah, patch him through.”

“No, Ms. Harmon, he is asking to see you.”

“Oh.” She sits up. He actually came. “Oh, sure, send him up.”

“Straight away, madam. Very good.” Now the concierge man seems the tiniest bit flustered, she can smell it on him even through the phone. He’s doing a good job of not letting it show.

She says thanks and hangs up on him. Lumbering out of bed feels like more work than it should and her nose still feels raw even though she hasn’t blown it yet today. Beth drags on a thin robe that she thought to bring, a world-class overpacker. There’s a soft knock on the door.

“Hey,” she’s saying before opening the door, flipping the lock and turning the knob.

God, he actually did come. She waves him in quickly, but the damage is already done. Borgov’s been seen at the hotel with no reason to be here and it’s probably known that she has lingered in Moscow by virtue of skipping some pretty important engagements. At the White House. Maybe that can be rescheduled? She hasn’t cared to check before now. Her home phone has probably been ringing off the hook. She may or may not have been spending the week grateful that it’s the USSR and western newspapers and magazines aren’t really on offer and she's had every excuse to live in an informational black hole.

She’s been out of the hotel a lot, probably missed some important calls. Beth mentally files that away; she should call down to the front desk and ask for a list of all her missed calls before it’s time to leave. Without her bodyguard here to play secretary, she’s got to keep it in mind she won’t be in Moscow forever. In fact, very soon she will be leaving with no foreseeable plans to return for quite some time, maybe a year.

So embarrassing, but fuck it, she’s glad to see him while they can be together.

Vasya proffers the bottle of cough syrup from his coat pocket.

“Okay, c’mon, sit.” She gestures to the untouched side of the bed. They should be sitting in chairs like people, but honestly she’s not feeling up to it and sees no need to hide it. He hangs his coat in the closet next to her flying outfit and the scene is so blindingly domestic she has to look away. This time he takes his shoes off unprompted. So he can be trained. Interesting. 

Beth takes the opportunity of already being upright to refill her water glass, chug it in front of the sink, and then refill it again.

There’s no spoon, so when she climbs back into bed, she holds her hand out for the bottle and takes a quick glug when he forks it over. Beth passes the bottle back to him before the temptation to knock back the entire thing can take true hold. 

“Thanks.” She rests back on the plump pillows and sighs through her mouth because her nose isn’t currently accepting the free passage of air. “I’m glad you’re here,” she offers and doesn’t look at him because she doesn’t expect to see a reaction and this time it might actually sting.

She reaches across the end table to grab the first two books on top of the stack, hands him one without checking the title. Turnabout’s fair play and if she has to practice her Russian, he has to practice his English. They’re all chess theory, it’s not like he won’t know a lot of the words already. “Read up, buster. You’re gonna need it.” She grins at him through a scratchy voice, not sure how much of that he caught but feeling confident he can read the challenge in her voice.

Vasya stretches out, crosses his long legs at the ankle, and cracks open the book without further comment. 

Should she be arming her greatest competitor with her personal arsenal of strategies, tips, and traps? No, absolutely not.

And the odds are, he’s already read a lot of this in his lengthy career in world-class chess. But if there’s a chance to combat an even greater opponent on the board, she’ll seize it with both hands. It also answers this tiny but disquieting part of her that’s wondering if what they’re trying to do without really doing it is emotional sabotage - getting involved just enough to get confused about how to play one another again. Headgames. But neither of them play like that and she hopes they never will. Like her, Vasya wants only to play his best and that means playing the best. They can’t do that when they play chess even when they’re off the board.

Beth rests on the book more than reads it, chin on folded hands, and slips into something of a drowsy haze as she reads. She notes the flip of each page from the other side of the bed and yeah, he’s definitely a faster foriegn language reader than her even if her verbal skills are stronger. 

They pass hours not speaking that way, without needing or wanting to. And she gathers that this will be the hardest part of all, trying to replicate being close without spending time together in quiet closeness, two solitary souls sharing one peace. She’s actually starting to get a smidge emotional about it, christ. It’s going to be hard to leave. 

She thinks about that for a minute, then sets her book aside. Lifting up the covers to get more slack, she scoots forward until her front rests against his side and she wraps an arm over his middle. He feels soft with age, proportionately large everywhere. If he’s surprised by it, she can’t see his face to spot it. Vasya folds his arm over her shoulder and holds his book in the other hand. Beth leans her head on his chest and lets herself lay and breathe in the soft afternoon in this room totally removed from the world outside. She doesn’t want to leave.

Beth doesn’t always get what she wants.


	9. Delivered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chugga chugga

Beth makes her phone calls with Vasya next to her in bed.

The front desk provides her with a long list of missed callers they’ve routed to her phone in the past six days. She can’t get the president’s secretary or any of the assorted people that figure out his social calendar on the phone, shrugs and figures at least she made the effort. It’s funny to be arranging any of it with a Soviet in her bed, the thought tickling her. 

She phones a few of the prestigious chess clubs that have reached out to set something up for next month if they’re willing to help finance her stay. Beth does love to travel. But she’s running out of money, so. Again, it’s amusing to be famous for defeating the man sitting peaceably next to her with his nose in a book and no one on the other side of the phone knows.

Vasya leaves damningly late in the evening, enough that he should have left hours ago and she gets this wonderful feeling like he’s as hesitant to part as she is. But it implies he has misgivings, too. What if it doesn’t work when they’re not together? What if this trembling thing between them is too fragile to survive the small strain of three weeks apart? They’ve agreed on it, to convene in twenty three days with ten of the other reigning kings of chess on the English coastline, in Hastings. She has no idea how to finance the trip, but it’s far from a futile hope that funding will be easier to come by with her recent win, after “beating the commies” and so on. But that reputation is taking a hit every minute she lingers.

They spend minutes embraced, warmly snug in each other’s arms. She’s never, never felt like this and she never wants to again.

It feels almost like a physical blow to the chest not to be able to kiss. But this close to another tournament, there’s no goddamn way she’s going to do anything to sabotage the integrity of her decisions. She doesn’t want a single goddamn reason to look back on her actions and have a right to second guess her motives, not for a minute. This is already too complicated, by several stripes.

It’s an early flight. They have to part. Vasya takes her hand and holds his mouth to it, a look comes into his eyes like he wants to kiss his way up her arm and keep going and he has to satisfy himself with another firm press of his mouth to her palm.

She tucks herself into bed feeling both warm all over and forlorn. It’s still warm on his side, impression of a body faintly sunk into the bedclothes. Beth wonders how Vasya’s been justifying all this time together with an American to the powers that be, if that’s a level of scrutiny he’s under. Asking feels wrong. It would pop the little bubble of disreality they live in together, yes, but more importantly asking in itself may put him in a spot, even if he doesn’t answer, which if she knows him at all - and she can admit she doesn’t, not really - he wouldn’t. There are a lot of questions she can’t ask.

Beth is up bright and early, checks out of the hotel dressed smartly and ignoring the attention she’s garnering.

”Thank you,” she says, handing in her key to the front desk, shades already on to provide some fortification. She coughs into her gloved fist, then tips. 

She grabs a taxi out front. It’s freezing out and all of a sudden she realizes she’s glad to be going home, even as whole parts of her will remain in Moscow as the plane leaves the tarmac.

There are three reporters at the airport. She’s already second-guessing that tip for the front desk.

They flock to her inside. They must be a hearty bunch, she knows her schedule’s been chaotic. Two are speaking in English, one in Russian.

“Harmon, why did you stay in Russia? Aren’t you worried you’ll look sympathetic to the communist agenda?” Bold of him to ask in a Moscow airport.

“Ms. Harmon, is it true you’re not feeling well? Will you be able to recover in time for your next competition? What tournament will you attend next and how do you expect to perform based on your illness?” How on earth did they know she’s been sick?

 _”What is your stance on ------ protesting ---------------- Cuba again? When do you plan to return to our country?”_ She’s missing whole slices of the question. Her Russian isn’t as good as they think, but whatever the question is, she definitely doesn’t want to answer it.

Beth plans to shoulder her way through, then opts to stop to make a brief statement to appease them instead so she can wait for the flight in peace. If she avoids them, they’ll probably just get louder and more intrusive. Also, she doesn’t want to be a bitch.

“The Russian hospitality looked after me well and I’m back on my way to good health. It was just a cold,” she waves the reporters off, then turns and adds off-handedly, “Russia’s a cold place with a warm people. But I did miss Kentucky.” Beth tucks her hands into her pockets and walks away and feels she’s said too much. Oops. She wants to clarify and defend it, say “they really do love chess here” or something, which is the goddamn truth, but it’s too late, she’s already walking away. That one’s gonna bite her in the ass later.

She fucking does sound like a commie sympathizer.

She wants to get to be cranky, to say _I’m a chess player, not a goddamn politician_ , but the truth is ever since she quote unquote beat the Soviets at their own game, everything she does will be political until she starts losing. And Beth doesn’t plan on doing that anytime soon.

The wait for the flight is short, the flight itself endless. The sky seems to open up before her, clouds cast in beautiful sunlight and somehow it all ends up looking like a Boticelli painting. Beth’s flown a lot and that’s not what the sky normally looks like. It’s a good sign.

She does her best to sleep on the plane, resists the air service, even just to get a Coke. The minute her hand is in the air, she’s going to order a martini. Beth has the bottle of cough syrup in her pocket and feels they would mix entirely too well. She settles in next to the window and tries to enjoy the view, though it grows quite monotonous over the midnight Atlantic. The turbulence suits her mood and she finds herself enjoying the feeling of inside-matching-outside, even as her seat neighbors curse and a baby starts to cry.

The press hassel her at her layover in Paris and again in DC, then Lexington. She stops listening to the questions. It’s not like she’s going to answer anything, after she proved to be such a grand diplomat at the Moscow airport. She does however sign a lot of stuff and think about asking if there’s a captain’s lounge or something she can hide out in, snuffling into her tissues.

All her layers feel stripped away, like everyone can see something she can’t and she doesn’t know what her face is doing, so she keeps her sunglasses on and her collar pulled high and hopes it doesn’t make her stick out even more. Lot more chess fans in the world than she would have figured.

And this tiny, shameful part of her wonders if she didn’t say that bit about warm people to butter up the people who make the decisions so she can be allowed to speak with Vasya, to be with him. To be allowed him.


	10. Housed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pulling into the station.

Beth returns from her exhausting hours of travel sick, sore, and tired. She’s boiling water for tea and trying to muster the energy to lug her suitcase up the stairs when the phone rings.

She really, really doesn’t want to answer. But what if it’s important? What if it’s people calling with free money? She picks up with trepidation.

“Tell me you did not fuck Borgov.” It’s Benny.

She’s stunned. How did word get around so fast? Who squealed and how did they know in the first place? That fucking hotel. “Jesus, how much have you been calling? I just got in.” 

“Beth!”

“I did not fuck Borgov. I . . . just spent a little quality time with him. It was nice.”

“Oh god, that’s even worse. What the fuck, Beth?”

“I don’t know, it just happened! Jesus, Benny, it was . . . “

“Christ.” She can hear a rustle like he’s rubbing his face and the sleeve of his stupid cowboy jacket is brushing up against the phone.

“They’re not really into that over there.”

And then they’re both giggling, and it feels more like a conversation about boys with Jolene than one with Benny. Who was one such boy, once upon a very very recent time.

“Well, fuck me - “

“Already did, Benny.” They’re off again, giggling like school children, the kind who know how to have the fun she never really felt capable of when she was the right age for it.

Benny sighs into the phone. “Well,” he says again. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Trust me,” Beth assures him. “I really, really don’t.”

The letter comes on Saturday, slipped under the door before her morning coffee like a secret. She knows it’s probably already been read twice.

The letter is tastefully bland and very Vasya.

He writes about the upcoming tournament in Hastings, the weather worsening in Moscow the minute she left, the book on South American birds he’s reading. Stupid stuff. Wonderfully, wonderfully stupid stuff. She presses the paper to her chest and sighs in a way that will embarrass her later. It’s written in English. He’s practicing.

She writes back hastily in shaky cyrillics, talks about the flight, how her winter plants held up in her absence, going bowling with Jolene - one of the few extracurriculars she can presently afford. She leaves that part of it out. It is so, so hard, not to initiate a game-by-mail with him. But it feels wrong and dangerous to get their wires crossed when they’re about to compete in a few short yet somehow also torturously long weeks.

Beth wants to call him but doesn’t think it’s off-base to worry they may not have much to say. It’ll be good to keep up her speaking skills, but it might not be worth the anxiety and cost of a call to Moscow. No, letters permit silence to build and break as needed without putting pressure on either of them to force words where none are needed. They’re both quiet people.

In spite of her questionable take on Soviet hospitality, she does get another invitation to the White House. 

It’s guaranteed to turn into more of a photo op than an actual event in and of itself, but Beth is fine with her picture being taken. Beth is told in no uncertain terms that she is expected at the Oval Office in two days without further delays by a stern social secretary. They want to capitalize on the sensation of her success.

Her cold resolves itself in a timely manner and she no longer feels she’s threatening national security by bringing in the common cold to the Hill and shaking the president’s hand. The trip is paid for, her easiest flight yet on a private jet. She has a devil of a time trying to pick an outfit, but at long last settles on a mint green number with a very pretty scalloped collar and powerful cut to the silhouette. White coat on top, white cap, and Bob’s your uncle. Jolene vets the entire process while doing her utmost to personally clean out Beth’s trove liquor and wine. She hasn’t had a drop since Moscow and it definitely won’t last, but she wants to ride it out at least until Hastings so she can wipe the floor with Vasya on her own terms.

The hotel is pastel everywhere and she spends two hours on her hair alone. She calls down for an iron and board to get everything pressed just right. 

The meeting itself takes seven minutes, start to finish. Photographers swarm with flashing lights like circling fireflies. Her heels sink an inch into the heavy pile of the carpet and as she shakes the president’s hand, she can’t help but think everyone’s a little shorter than she thought they’d be. Could be the heels are too tall, can never count that out.

They sit across the coffee table on mirrored loveseats and she beats him in nine moves. “Well played, Mr. President.” She offers her hand for another cordial shake.

He stands to both shake her hand and pat her on the back. “Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’, kid, beating ‘em and show ‘em who’s boss. Did your country a service back there.”

“Yes, sir. I can do that.” She says it with a straight face, and feels perfectly serious. The president starts to grin at her bald-faced confidence and the sheer ridiculousness of the situation hits and she starts to smile. It makes for a nice picture in black and white the next day as she contemplates her morning coffee on the hotel balcony. She visits the chess club, plays what feels like every member, and only two of them have anything approaching remotely interesting play.

Beth heads home, writes another letter before she can get a response, and plays more racquetball with Jolene. She thinks desperately of alcohol and wants to reach through the pipes to snatch back the pills she flushed the night she got home, still high-minded and feeling powerful from finally admitting to someone that formidable, untouchable Borgov likes her.

She hits the books hard, knows she’ll be facing off against some new faces in England and wants to be prepared for anything even though it’s absolutely an exercise in futility to think that way. Any games worth playing will take turns that she’s never considered; in the end that’s the point. She buys an issue of _Chess Magazine_ with her face on it and thinks about where it would fit into Mr. Shaibel’s collection and tries to avoid the far left aisle at the grocery store where they keep the wine when she thinks too hard about it.

When Vasya’s reply comes in the mail and in her second and third letters, neither of them mention the newspapers, or the White House, or any of it, she can’t help but feel they’re both treading carefully around a minefield.


	11. Surrendered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've arrived!

Hastings is beautiful.

Christmas lights dot the bushes and drainpipes of many a seaside house, the coastal town sitting snug in its alcove on the frigid coastline.

The air is crisp, the people very British, and the drive down from London rainy and winding. She hasn’t bought a return ticket because out of a very foolish hope Vasya will be able to take a day trip to Canterbury with her after the tournament ends. It felt . . . like chancing something, testing something to plan for it but not call or write about it first. They can’t say no if he doesn’t give them enough time to. She imagines he will have to say no, that she will have to her best not to be disappointed. Beth won’t have trouble not taking it personally, but she might have trouble not taking it hard.

The windshield wipers beat against the glass. The car is turning into a looped driveway and there’s the inn, weather-washed brick beat down in a way that looks charming rather than sad.

Beth steps out of the car while her luggage is already being taken by the bellhop. She will do her utmost to both spend as much time with Vasya as possible and still treat him like any other player. That means quality time before and during the tournament, which is playing with fire. And she’s starting to feel like a damned pyromaniac.

Beth is very careful not to crane her head as she enters the inn. There aren’t reporters yet, thank Christ. 

She’s checking in, she’s getting her roomkey, she’s checking the foyer over and over again . . . there he is.

Vasya looks tidy and has the calm of a traveller who has already unpacked and had their nap. He’s flanked by two KGB agents engaged in quiet conversation. Beth is not sure she should approach, not sure if it would be weird not to. She’s very unused to being unsure. 

He spots her and summons with a minute twitch of the head. Vasya knows she’s in uncertain territory. Beth goes.

“Hello, again,” she says and offers her hand. She omits his name, doesn’t want to call him either.

“Good evening, Beth,” Vasya says, taking her hand to shake it firmly.

“I trust your flight went well?”

“Yes, it was short. And yours?” He’s definitely been practicing, no pause or labor between the words.

“Long but restful.” She has a brief moment to worry that’s all they’re able to say in their current company, with the human contents of the inn milling about when they’re two stars of the show, and that if they have nothing to say they have no excuse to associate, and then he asks, “No jet lag?” long on the _L._

Beth can’t help it, she laughs and denies it. “No, no jet lag. You had dinner yet?” Naturally, she didn’t sleep a wink on the way over.

“No.” He glances at the KGB agents, betraying no particular thoughts, then says, “Shall we?”

Vasya doesn’t offer her his arm and she’s glad he doesn’t because she wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. She desperately does not want to get him in trouble, make him look bad, make either of them into a spectacle.

“Let me just put away my bag.”

“The bellhop already took it to your room.”

“Okay, you got me, I wanted to change out of these clothes. They’ve got plane all over them.”

“Very well.” He gestures for her to go ahead and the implication rankles. She doesn’t need his permission to switch outfits. Beth pulls up short and narrows her eyes at him. Maybe the boys really do do it different in the USSR. But they’re in England now and she is dictated to by no man, as much as she may entertain their attempts at wooing her, owning her, molding her.

Vasya relents with a tilt of his head. “Beth, I will wait here. I look forward to dining with you.” It’s taken straight out of a businessman’s guide to English and the reminder of all the effort he’s making combined with the acquiescence and acknowledgement of it appeases her. She folds her arms and repeats “Very well,” with an answering nod of her head. 

She turns on her heel and heads up to the second floor and hopes she didn’t embarrass him in front of his little friends. Beth hears a quiet chuckle from behind her and doesn’t check to see who it was, if it was relevant to their interaction, if she’s supposed to feel mocked. God she’s so tired of having to second guess every last thing just to fucking make eye contact with this man.

But - and she reminds herself of this with a relax of her shoulders - it is worth it. It is.

The suitcase is on a stand and she pulls out a starchy shell pink number that’s survived the trip with minimal wrinkles, further smoothed by the tight fit of it. Change of shoes, throws on some pearls, reapplies lipstick, and she’s back out the door, handbag slung over one shoulder.

Beth rejoins the group in the foyer and they follow Vasya’s lead to a tavern down the road. The agents sit at a table next to them and all three Russians order a stew. She gets steak. Fuck it.

If Vasya questions her American instinct towards indulgence, he doesn’t show it. And finally sitting across from him again, it feels so good to be faced with the reflective mirror of his face, like being around him and his lack of reactivity helps her see herself better. Image bouncing off the blank slate right back to her. She feels so clear and starts to calm a little from getting worked up before.

They’re here, together. They can make this work. She glances around the tavern, it’s mostly empty.

 _”How have you been, Vasya?_ ”

_”I thought we were speaking English. We are in England, afterall.”_

_”I need to practice or I’ll lose all my skills.”_

_”Wise.”_

They pause as a chipper waiter refills their water glasses and brings them bread. She wants to talk to him about gameplay, but it’s categorically a bad idea. She’s dying to know what he thinks of a new bit of play she read about the other night, but then Beth has the most delicious idea of just using it on him instead and seeing what he does, how he dances. Oh, it’s going to be fabulous. Beth finds a smile on her face and reaches up to touch it, which is good because as impassive as Vasya is, he looks like he wants to do it for her.

_”Did you get my last letter?”_

_”I don’t know, which one was your last?”_

_”I wrote about my begonias. I’ve been growing them in my living room.”_ He doesn’t reply to that just yet and Beth doesn’t wait either. _”I had to move some of my trophies around to make room for them.”_ Vasya just looks at her like he’s waiting for the punchline. She’ll give him one. _”I’m looking forward to adding another one.”_

 _”You’re confident?”_ he asks, resting an arm calmly on the table.

 _”Oh Vasya,”_ she says, wishing she had cigarette smoke to blow in his face. “They’re going to have to mop you off the floor by the time I’m done.”

He may not understand the words, but he seems to read the tone just fine. He has a satisfied look on his face like he’s the one who said it, not her, but maybe that means he’s proud of her. Proud of her confidence in herself, happy to be up against someone who’s sure they’re the best - or could be. It feels good to be competitive, to be happy together. To have oneness and sameness even though it means they’re competing against each other. A shared love. She wants to hold his hand under the table, all of a sudden. Chess makes her feel things.

 _”I look forward to the game,”_ he says, even though it’s a round robin tournament and there’s going to be nearly fifty games total and they’ll both be in a lot of them, she knows what he really means, and Vasya takes her hand under the table anyway.


End file.
